It might have occurred to Gillard that the US itself has a few questions to answer about illegality in the Iraq and Afghanistan bloodbaths it has presided over. THAT is what Julian Assange and Wikileaks are about and they will have our unstinting support here at Wolves In The City. The US toadies are being smoked out wholesale by Wikileaks. Just one of their achievements.

12/04/2010

All I have is a voice
To undo the unfolded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky :
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone ;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police ;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies ;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic flashes of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages :
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

It's well established that the only special relationship is the one between the US and Israel. Wikileaks also disclose how William Hague and Liam Fox touted their pro-US tendencies in a craven fashion, offering to buy US arms if they were elected.

'The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.' NYT Article Here.

12/03/2010

The cables reveal a large-scale, closely coordinated effort by the US State Department to obstruct some criminal investigations in Spain too. Three, in particular:

- the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank;

- an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo;

- a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

High-ranking U.S. visitors such as former Republican Party Chairman Mel Martinez, Senator Greg Judd, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were party to this effort, warning Spanish political leaders that the criminal investigations would “be misunderstood” and would harm bilateral relations. The U.S. diplomats also, disgracefully, sought out and communicated directly with judges and prosecutors, attempting to steer the cases into the hands of judges of their choosing. The cables also reflect an absolutely extraordinary rapport between the Madrid embassy and Spanish prosecutors, who repeatedly appear to be doing the embassy’s bidding. El Pais details the situation :

Over the last several years, the Embassy of the United States in Madrid wielded powerful resources in an extraordinary effort to impede or terminate pending criminal investigations in Spain which involved American political and military figures assumed to have been involved in incidents of torture in Guantánamo, violations of the laws of war in Iraq or kidnappings in connection with the CIA’s extraordinary renditions program. The American diplomatic legation documented these activities in a number of its thousands of secret documents, both formally classified or marked as confidential, to which El País had access. The American ambassador between 2005 and 2009, Eduardo Aguirre, an appointee of the Bush Administration, personally directed most of these efforts targeting the Spanish Government or the Spanish judicial authorities, and the secret cables note that he reckoned with and secured the support of powerful figures in Spain in the process. Prominent among these is the Spanish attorney general, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, together with several prosecutors attached the Audiencia Nacional, in particular the chief prosecutor, Javier Zaragoza.

The cables show that the embassy was briefed in detail about the pending cases, receiving information that was not publicly accessible and would have been known only to the prosecutors and the magistrates handling the cases. The embassy engaged Spanish authorities in detailed discussions about the specific judges handling these cases and on at least one occasion extracted a promise from prosecutors to seek to have one sensitive case—in which former U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former vice presidential chief of staff David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Baybee, Douglas Feith, and William J. Haynes figured as potential defendants—reassigned to a judge they considered friendlier to the United States. In fact, around the time of the cables in question the prosecutors acted just as the cable suggests they would.

The cables also reflect a high level of concern at the prospect that Spanish and German prosecutors—both looking at aspects of the kidnapping and torture of Khaled El-Masri—would share notes and begin taking action. In fact exactly this sort of cooperation occurred (as it has occurred between Spanish, German, and Italian prosecutors in several other cases involving the CIA extraordinary rendition program), and U.S. concerns that it would block their efforts were proven correct. After political pressure was applied to Germany to withdraw the arrest warrants, they were simply reissued by the Spanish magistrates, who were better shielded against political manipulation. Even although diplomats routinely monitor and report on legal cases that affect national interests, the cables show that the U.S. embassy in Madrid had far exceeded this mandate, however, and was actually successfully steering the course of criminal investigations, the selection of judges, and the conduct of prosecutors. Their disclosure has created deep concern about the independence of judges as reported over several days in Spain and the manipulation of the entire criminal justice system by America. It makes Clinton's bleating about illegality on the part of Wikileaks all the more pathetic.

12/02/2010

By Tom Parker

Walid Yunis Ahmad is quite possibly the longest serving detainee in Iraq. He is a member of the marginalized Turkoman minority and has been imprisoned in Irbil, Northern Iraq, without charge or trial for more than ten years.

Walid was detained by Kurdish security forces in February 2000 after he was given a lift in a car that allegedly contained explosives. Although the driver of the car was released within three months, Walid remains locked up more than a decade later.

For the first three years after his detention Walid’s family received no official notification of his arrest and believed he had simply disappeared.

During these early years of confinement, Walid was tortured, held in solitary confinement and transferred from prison to prison until he finally ended up in the cells of the Kurdish security police headquarters, where he remains to this day.

Walid told Amnesty International delegates who visited him last June:

“I haven’t seen my children for 10 years. I did not want to see them in this terrible predicament.”

In response to Amnesty International’s inquiries, Kurdish authorities could offer no indication of when they planned to bring Walid to trial.

In addition to widespread due process violations, our report details theextensive use of torture in Iraq’s prisons— including prolonged suspension, beating, asphyxiation, and rape or the threat of rape.

The Iraqi Human Rights Ministry received 574 reports of torture carried out by state officials in 2009 alone. The majority of abuse occurs in the early weeks and months of detention and is often used to obtain confessions, upon which Iraqi courts rely heavily as evidence of guilt.

Hundreds of detainees have ultimately been executed on the basis of confessions obtained by torture.

Amnesty International is calling on the Iraqi government to address the human rights crisis in its prisons and its criminal justice system. You can play your part by highlighting the plight of Walid Yunis Ahmad.

Amnesty International’s Counter Terror with Justice Campaign has been working on Walid’s case since September. Activists have been sending postcards (email ctwj@aiusa.org to order postcards) and emails to the Kurdistan Regional Government, urging them to either charge and fairly try Walid, or release him.

12/01/2010

Writing on her Facebook page on Monday, Palin questioned why the US authorities were not looking for him in the same way that it had hunted suspected 'terrorists.' (pronounced in an annoying, whining voice as 'tayrorists' you may recall from her description of Obama's pals during the Presidential Election).

Attacking Julian Assange, she said, “He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”

She went on: “What if any diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on NATO, EU, and other allies to disrupt Wikileaks’ technical infrastructure? Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle Wikileaks? Were individuals working for Wikileaks on these document leaks investigated? Shouldn’t they at least have had their financial assets frozen just as we do to individuals who provide material support for terrorist organizations?”

Palin of course is tipped to run for President in 2012, also said that “serious questions” had to be asked about how the “highly sensitive” memos from diplomats and intelligence officers could have been uploaded onto a computer memory stick and given to WikiLeaks from a supposedly secure US defence department network known as Siprnet. The prime suspect is Bradley Manning, a young private in the US Army who is now being held ahead of a court-martial. Palin asked why the White House had not issued orders to tighten security back in July, when WikiLeaks released thousands of classified military documents on Afghanistan.

She concludes: “We are at war. American soldiers are in Afghanistan fighting to protect our freedoms. They are serious about keeping America safe. It would be great if they could count on their government being equally serious about that vital task.”

Rick Santorum, another prominent conservative, agreed with her, saying: “We haven't gone after this guy, we haven't tried to prosecute him, we haven't gotten our allies to go out and lock this guy up and bring him up on terrorism charges.”

We ask - who is the biggest threat to peace in the world? Julian Assange or these right-wing moonbats?

Nicholas Sarkozy made at this meeting a veritable pledge of love for the Americans. 'Sarkozy has expressed his admiration for President Bush, wrote the ambassador. Sarkozy has said that, like President Bush, he has also made it a matter of honour to keep his word and to honestly confront the real problems of his country.'

More:"'They call me' Sarkozy the American '," he said. 'They consider it an insult, but I take as a compliment. "Sarkozy said how much he 'will match' in American values", the diplomat wrote. "He said that when he was a child, he told his father he wanted to be president. His father replied because of his Hungarian origin, he would have to go to America, because with a name like Sarkozy, you will never succeed here. " To prove that it was false, said Sarkozy, is the purpose of my determination both to succeed [becoming president] and transform France. "

The ambassador concluded that "Sarkozy is viscerally pro-American" and that"he sees his own rise as a reflection of the American saga". Paper bag, anyone?